How Many Nights of Limping 'Round on Pagan Holidays?

"I remember waking up as the sun was reddening; and that was the one distinct moment in my life, the strangest moment of all, when I didn't know who I was- I was far away from home, haunted and tired with travel, in a cheap hotel room I'd never seen, hearing the hiss of steam outside, and the creak of the old wood of the hotel, and footsteps upstairs, and all the sad sounds, and I looked at the cracked high ceiling, and really didn't know who I was for about fifteen strange seconds. I wasn't scared; I was just somebody else, some stranger."

I just got back from Cologne.
My first day in the city was strange.
I woke up in Calais feeling not so great. I was very meloncholic and anxious, and I couldn't shake the feeling any more than I could place what was causing it; I still can't, really. It was very early in the morning, and everyone else was asleep, so I took a beachside walk. I sat on the sand and watched the ferries coming in and made patterns with the sea shells, and that was fine. The five hour car ride to Germany wasn't.
This was weird, because I normally crave long journeys of all kinds. And they're every bit a part of the Summer. But in that moment, there was nothing I wanted less than to be stuck with myself in the backseat for any length of time. I couldn't decide what to listen to, so I switched from album to album, and eventually decided nothing was sounding good, gave up on music, books and scenery and went to sleep instead.
When I got there, I wandered around the city for a couple of hours. Up and down the streets, around the cathedral and along the Rhein. For whatever reason, I couldn't allow myself to be inundated with whatever beauty there was in the city that day (and there was so much, if looked at in the right way). It was just a really off day, and I was appreciating nothing.
I just locked myself in my hotel room, curled up on the sofa and stuck on a record that I didn't have to pay attention to because I know it inside out. Maybe not a favourite, or an album that I think is technically the best (I never really cared for the first two tracks much), but an album that I can always go back to when I need it, because it is just so comforting. And honest and gentle and devastating. It was Elliott Smith's self-titled.
I'm going to add that The Biggest Lie is one of my favourite closers to any album, and that its probably the best song to listen to through headphones when you're sulking in a hotel room by yourself on a rainy Summer evening in a beautiful foreign city.

I fell in love with the place the next day, though. I'd go back in a heartbeat.